“Forgotten Hollywood”- My Kind of Town…

Posted on May 20, 2013 by raideoman1 | No Comments

Manny P. here…     (reporting from Hoffman Estates, Illinois)

wrigley field   Laurie and I are in the Burbs of Chicago… Hoffman Estates. We’re here for a variety of reasons documented in a recent blog. But, to give you a sense of this iconic city, let me remind you about it’s fabulous ties to cinema.

   Several classics come to mind. The opening scenes of Some Like it Hot, when Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon witness the famous St. Valentines Day Massacre. Of course, Frank Sinatra’s rat-pack classic, Robin and the 7 Hoods is another gangster-related film; and it features the wonderful Standard, My Kind of Town (Chicago is), written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. Other more recent movies we’ve enjoyed… The Untouchables with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery, and The Blues Brothers.

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  However, let me share some recent history of the movies made in and around the suburbs of Chicago by the director of the brat pack genre… John Hughes. A majority of Hughes’ films were set in the North Shore suburbs of the Chicago metropolitan area. In some of his work, the setting is specifically identified as the fictional Shermer, Illinois, a nod to the original name of Northbrook… Shermerville. He directed or scripted some of the most successful celluloid stories of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Weird Science, The Breakfast ClubPretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, and Home Alone. The films made stars of Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, John Cryer, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Matthew Broderick, Demi Moore,  James Spader, Mare Winningham, Andrew McCarthy, Macaulay Culkin, Judd Nelson, and Ally Sheedy. Cinema replicating the premise include Risky Business and Adventures in Babysitting; popcorn flicks starring Elizabeth Shue and Tom Cruise. In 1994, Hughes retired to his beloved Chicago…

   As we begin ten days in the Midwest, this is my tribute to Burbs-area.

Until next time>                               “never forget”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 20th, 2013 at 2:33 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


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